Strategy 1: Birthday Special using FB Advertising

Did you know that you can setup an ongoing ad in Facebook that will only be shown to people who have a birthday coming up in the next 7 days? If you have a birthday special for your restaurant, you can advertise to people who have a birthday coming up. I also recommend creating at least 4 ads that target different demographics and have appropriate imagery for each demographic. Here are 4 segments you could consider: young men, older men, young women, older women. There are many other segments that you could consider...like people with kids....people without kids, etc. Figure out what fits for your main types of patrons and then create specific ads for each of them.

Strategy 2: YouTube ads for Events

Is there a special event coming up? Do people have trouble finding where you are? Is there a special new dish you just added to the main menu? Create a video ad that can be shown on YouTube in those few seconds that you get before a video plays. If you can convey your message in the first 8 seconds you get your ad shown to people and don't have to pay much when they hit skip. Make the video much longer and explain a lot more in detail after those first 8 seconds. Pay for the ad to be shown via Google AdWords and set the GeoTargeting to be local to people who would visit your establishment.

Strategy 3: Free Wifi Hub in your Restaurant

Setup a free Wifi hub in your restaurant that patrons can access via a "terms of service" page where they have to agree to not abuse the connection. Setup a Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics Tag on that terms of service page so visitors get tagged and you have the ability to advertise to them later. Wouldn't it be great to be able to easily advertise to people who you know have already been to your establishment? Repeat customers are a staple of restaurants and once you get them in 7+ times, your restaurant starts to become a habit that they'll continually think of as a place to go for food. This is a very effective (and cheap) way to increase your top of mind branding.

Strategy 4: Running a Contest to get More Likes and Exposure

Seems like everyone is running a contest these days and some are doing it in a more strategic way than others. Facebook is a great place to run a contest and get a bump in exposure and it only costs you the value of what you put on the gift card that you give away. Small warning though, according to FB rules, you are not supposed to give away something that is not closely related to your business. So if you are a restaurant and you give away tickets to a concert, that's technically against their terms and your page could be shut down. Lots of people are risking it and just doing it anyways, but there is a possibility that Facebook will catch it and shut down their page. You are also not allowed to have people enter the contest by tagging someone else in the comments. That's against their rules and could also get you shut down. So be mindful of that...but you can launch a contest and get really great results if you do it the right way.

For a complete training video on how to run a successful contest for your restaurant, click the button below to get the training.